By Fahiym Ratcliffe, Special to AOL BlackVoices
Quoth Mars Blackman, "It's gotta be the shoes."
Yeah, only if you pay enough for the right.
In a distant era of Cousy and Chamberlain and even Irving, while Phil Knight was still hocking shoes out of the trunk of his car, basketball sneaks were just there for the dirty work - keeping splinters out of your toes. Most players bought their own shoes, and when they did they were always the ubiquitous Chuck Taylors - a canvas and rubber Converse shoe named after a 1920s star of the same name.
But in the late '80s, '90s and into the 2000s, while people went crazy for (and then forgot) pumps, British Knights and L.A. Gears, the name on the shoe became almost as important as the name on the back of the jersey.
The Nike Air Jordan, the flagship line of the sneaker market, started the craze and in 20 years, teenage phenom LeBron James had already signed a $90 million shoe deal with Nike before he ever put on his first headband in the NBA - a far cry from the $2.5 million deal Michael Jordan signed with Nike after leaving North Carolina.
So what happened in two decades to turn Adidas, Nike and Reebok from NBA items with no more importance than Wilson, Rawlings and Spaulding to the most important names in the NBA?
Meet Juan Pablo. Sneakerhead. And the millions and millions like him.
The shoe market has become a $2.5 billion industry and shoe companies have become a driving force in where players go to college, where they sign professionally and how much money they command.
And the reason has little do with on-court factors. It's because very early on, grass-roots basketball legend Sonny Vaccaro and Nike, Reebok and Adidas learned that it's not necessarily the stars wearing your shoes that matter, it's which star can control the urban market.
Confessions of a Sneakerhead
At the hip-hop magazine that the 26 year-old New York native Pablo works for as a freelance research editor, it pays to stay fresh from a fashion point of view. He's known within his department for copping the latest t-shirt or hat, and at least once or twice during the day by his cubicle, there's always a discussion on something fashion related, especially as it relates to sneakers. To him, footwear is a staple in one's fashion diet and though he doesn't see himself as a "shoe addict," he does admit that getting regular doses of "kicks" is a must. "I wouldn't say that I'm a sneaker addict, because I know a lot more people who are more fiends for this. But I do indulge in getting a couple of pairs at least a couple of times per month."
In recent years, sneakers have become more and more a part of the dress code of urban America. Coupled with the rise of artist-backed footwear (see Jay-Z's and 50 Cent's S.Carter's and G-Unit's respectively put out by RBK) and the number of custom-made sneaker entrepreneurs such as Harlem-based outfit Remix Da' Kicks, staying "dipped" with latest pair of sneakers on one's feet has increasingly mandatory for urban men. Even some nightclubs are becoming more relaxed with their dress codes, where entry to a hotspot whose fashion mandate is "causal stylish" has come to encompass a pair of crisp, white, low-top Nike Air Force Ones. Women traditionally have gone bonkers for shoes. Now it appears they're going to have to share closet space with their husbands or boyfriends.
"This whole sneaker collecting phenomenon is founded in sports," says longtime hip-hop connoisseur and semi-professional baller, Bobbito Garcia, who also authored the book "Where'd you Get Those? - New York City Sneaker Culture 1960 - 1987. For Bobbito, the melding of sports, particularly basketball, and the emergence of hip-hop in the 1980s skyrocketed the phenomenon. "It's founded in - like any sneaker that's a cachet sneaker in hip-hop, [being] originally a high performance basketball shoe that was popularized on the playgrounds of New York and then rippled into the hip-hop community and then rippled into being the casual lifestyle staple shoes of all these sneaker companies. Take the Adidas shell toe for example. [Playground legend] Joe Hammond was rocking that [look] back in the early '70s in the Rucker. The Rucker was the biggest [basketball] tournament and he legitimized Adidas on the street and years later, Adidas increased their distribution. Run-DMC got wind of it a decade later in the '80s and popularized it to the rest of the world," adds Bobbito.
And after Run-DMC forever etched the Adidas shell toes in the annals of hip-hop history, the next footwear line to be adopted by the hip-hop community was Nike, whom Bobbitio credits the company's signing of Michael Jordan for the Air Jordan and the hip-hop-influenced commercials directed and featuring Spike Lee for its tremendous growth. "Spike Lee spoke in his own tongue on that first Air Jordan commercial - that's what really blew up the sneaker industry," says Bobbito. "And what did they do? They used the street aesthetic." Now it is Nike's Air Force Ones that have become hip-hop's favorite staple shoe, feverishly worn by hip-hop and black Hollywood elite as well as around-the-way joes.
The trick now is to find the athlete who will get shoes on the Harlem playgrounds and out to South Street - Allen Iverson, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony - and work out from the urban market.
Since the late 1980's, the design of the shoe gone through some minor tweaks, before settling for today's classic style seen on any street U.S.A. Yet, for some, the classic look and the most popular colors of the Air Forces (white or black) is not enough. Though one can purchase multiple pairs of the same shoe in an effort to keep the kicks fresh, the more "contemporary" move for sneaker fiends getting those "exclusive" hard-to-find, expensive shoes in varying colors. And the sneaker giants themselves have recognized the trend and have taken it a step further by going so far to re-release "throwback" or previous versions of their models going back ten, 20, and some cases 40 years, looking to cash-in on the peaking demand.
As a result of the consumer demand to be in exclusive company, on the come-up entrepreneurs have opened small boutique shops across the country, not to in mention places like France and Japan to cater to this fetish. Other enterprising ventures include "sneaker customizing," where consumers can get their favorite sneaks painted in different flavors and/or, have assorted material placed on them such as snakeskin, etc. Names like Remix Da' Kicks, and the Japanese-based Bathing Apes, which has taken the form of the Nike Air Force One shoe and reconstructed its own brand, are some of the more popular ones. And its such ventures likes these that Bobbito feels persons of color can get a piece of sneaker market share. "The sneaker industry has to recognize is that without the black and latino community, they would not have increased their sales by 300 percent by the end of the '80s," Bobbito says. "If Remixdakickz can get that paper, I love it. I love that sneaker companies now are recognizing the power of recording artists and putting some money into their pockets for making sneakers. It's great."
But ultimately sneaker collecting, (though if not balanced with some other fruitful activities could lead to a serious depleting of one's finances), is about expressing the urban consumer's need to be an individual and feel unique. Just ask Juan. "As a kid growing up, my parents would get me two pairs of kicks for the whole year. Now that I'm older, I can get a lot more."
Quoth Nelly, "Give me two pair."
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